Artificial Embryo Created: No Egg, No Sperm, No Problem

MIT Technology Review has the story: “In a breakthrough that redefines how life can be created, embryologists working at the University of Cambridge in the UK have grown realistic-looking mouse embryos using only stem cells. No egg. No sperm. Just cells plucked from another embryo.”

“The researchers placed the cells carefully in a three-dimensional scaffold and watched, fascinated, as they [the cells] started communicating and lining up into the distinctive bullet shape of a mouse embryo several days old.”

“’We know that stem cells are magical in their powerful potential of what they can do. We did not realize they could self-organize so beautifully or perfectly,’ Magdelena Zernicka¬-Goetz, who headed the team, told an interviewer at the time.”